On the morning after the election, as news that Hillary Clinton, winner of the popular vote and my own, nonetheless lost to Donald J. Trump, I felt a deep disconnect looking over the batch of new books on my desk (all out this month and next) celebrating the Danish art of hygge, or creating a cozy, convivial atmosphere for the sake of well-being, as the word (pronounced hoo-gah) roughly translates. Nervously leafing through these pretty lifestyle guides while I gathered enough steel to read, I landed on a photo in The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort, and Connection (Plume), by half-Danish, half-English journalist Louisa Thomsen Brits, showing a small, rustic basket filled with perfectly round stones. Worried that the bigotry, misogyny, and climate-change denial stirred up in this election could now determine actual policies, I thought, Are you kidding me? A basket of rocks is going to save humanity?

Danes have high levels of trust for one another and describe themselves as content when their friends are contented.

Along with Brexit and Trumpism, hygge—already big among Remain-voting Brits who have only tightened their embrace of hygge classes, handicrafts, and kaffe gatherings since their country unexpectedly elected to leave the EU last summer—was selected by the UK-based Collins Dictionary as one of the words best capturing the whipsawing spirit-winds of 2016. Many have long marveled at Scandinavia's remarkable well-being stats. And economists and social scientists usually attribute Denmark's consistent ranking as one of the world's happiest countries to its free, government-sponsored education and health care, as well as a progressive tax system that tamps down inequality. But lately the academic set has been giving hygge some credit, too. Not only do Danes have high levels of trust for one another and describe themselves as content when their friends are contented, but they regard their own knack for hunkering down to rap and relax (preferably in a casual, serene, white-and-wood-accented house) as "an expression of our unity," according to author Malene Rydahl, author of Happy as a Dane (W. W. Norton).

Considering that 52 percent of U.S. adults said in an American Psychological Association survey that they'd felt significant election-related stress, my editor and I wondered whether the new hygge lit might be an antidote to our collective anxiety. Could it even help us mend relationships damaged by political divisiveness? What we hoped for, in other words, was a few Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up–level epiphanies for our souls.

Sinking further into these books, with an admittedly un-hyggeligt clenched jaw, I was initially unmoved by the paeans to steamy cardamom buns; to Hay, Copenhagen's superstore for Scandinavian high-end minimalist design; and to the power of sheepskins and soft woolly throws "to really soften any interior space and make it a more soothing environment to live in," in the words of chef and food writer Signe Johansen in How to Hygge: The Nordic Secrets to a Happy Life(St. Martin's Griffin). However, in The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (William Morrow), well-being researcher Meik Wiking started to draw me in with his deeper analysis of the components of happiness, citing psychological research showing that close social relationships and time spent socializing, eating, and relaxing—"also main ingredients of hygge," he notes—tend to be the greatest drivers of joy.

Which is how I found myself, well, warming up to the idea of trying to hygge myself. And—uff da!, as Scandinavian Americans in my neck of the upper Midwest say when they're surprised (the expression means, roughly, "oops, my bad")—I found the wisdom of coming together to foster kinship, trust, and openness getting under my skin, dissolving the sorrow and fear I'd been feeling for my country and restoring, yes, my optimism.

How did I hygge? I invited a few friends over to share an easy meal of smoked fish and slow- cooker curry (the closest approximation I could muster to Wiking's delicious-sounding recipe for Danish skibberlabskovs, or skipper stew, featuring brisket and beets), which we ate by candlelight in front of a fire, sitting on cushy couches covered with a generous assortment of pillows and fuzzy throws. I decided not to worry about people spilling! Our far-ranging conversation helped us find ways through difficult thoughts. And we laughed—for the first time in days—as we processed the extraordinary weirdness of the past year. I couldn't help thinking that by doing in my own way what Danes have done for millennia (squinting into the fire that night, I could imagine my buddies morphing into beautiful Vikings), I allowed myself to tap into a type of healthy tradition that hard-charging Americans like me usually disdain.

As Brits writes in her book (the most poetic of the bunch; I found myself repeatedly returning to its list-like incantation of hyggeligt habits), when we hygge, "we are not ignoring difficulty but putting it down for a while. Pain and shadow still exist on the periphery.… We acknowledge their presence and prepare ourselves to address them by committing ourselves to the pleasures of the present moment, in order to regain momentum and cope with life with equanimity in the future."

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